A courtesy photo provided by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife shows one of the thousands of mountain goats in Washington.
The public can weigh in on a plan to move mountain goats from Olympic National Park to the North Cascades this summer and next summer at four meetings scheduled for later this month.
Representatives from the U.S. Forest Service and the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife will be on hand to answer questions at the meetings to be held in Sedro Woolley, Darrington, North Bend and Sultan.
Officials have long sought to remove non-native mountain goats from Olympic National Park to protect people and native plants. A Port Angeles man was gored to death by a mountain goat while hiking there in 2010.
A 2016 survey of the area found the mountain goat population increased 8 percent annually from 2004 to 2016.
Last year, officials proposed capturing and moving them to the North Cascades — where they are native but their population is low — or killing mountain goats by shooting them from helicopters.
